[Buddha-l] [Fwd: [skepnet] Documentaire: Jesus Camp (2006)]

[Joy Vriens]

Eric,

>Joy Vriens schreef: 
>> According to R¨¦gis Debray, and who am I to not believe him, religions are mainly about building a group identity.  
    
>I agree with you here, I think it was D¨¹rkheim who first articulated the  
>relation between tribal consciousness and religion. I wonder if that can  
>be an excuse, several mild and respectable rituals have cruel and  
>primitive backgrounds, but that doesn't give the people the right to  
>evoke the meanings of yesteryear. 

For what reason wouldn't they have "the right"? I don't get you here. Why would they not have the right to even exploit them for more personal agendas? In love, war and religion, all is fair.

Because as for me personally, if I am asked to particpate at a ritual, I want to know why I am doing the ritual and what I am exactly doing. And then I will perhaps want to look at what the origin of that ritual is. If I am asked to participate in offerings of red bali, then it is fair enough to evoke the fact that they replace animal sacrifices. And why would I have not the right to look into the question to whom I make them, why I, a Westerner, make them, what is the relation between those offerings, me and my practice of Buddhism.     

>>  But when you come to think of it, how is it possible that those eroded religions have been built on the foundations of a hardcore religion and evolved out of it and are still considered as being that same religion. It seems to me that the substance of this connection is simply group identity. If as a religion your ennemy tells you that there is religion and religion and that yours is ok, then you may wonder what is left of your original hardcore religion? 
>>    
>This is the machinery of rituals, where the act becomes a metaphore. The  
>transformations of signifiers in hinduism are wellknown and part of the  
>Vedas or Samhitas (Aranyakas), but I think it's also one of the meanings  
>of the myth of Abraham and Isac. 
>> If you dig a bit into any religion, dig, not superficially look at the image they give to the outside world, then you will be astounded at all the madness you discover.   
>>    
>No argument here. But in many rituals the meaning has become uncertain  
>and has to be revived again. This gives an excellent opportunity to fill  
>in another agenda and in many cases like here I suspect this is  
>motivated by resentment and spite. 

I am not a big fan of rituals, for me they are all forms of suggestion and mass suggestion. They may create a temporary atmosphere, feeling, that may be shared and create a certain harmony within a group and appease anguish in the individuals of that group. The motivations for celebrating rituals are various and may inlcude resentment and spite, why not? Once again, for me there is no natural link between religion, rituals and spiritual exercices. That link may be artificially established and then not respected by some, sure. Others may then consider they didn't have the right and that they did break the pact, but for me that link has never really existed.       

>>> I hope there are no Buddhacamps anywhere in the world.  
>>>      
>> I noticed the special effort that was put into making the children feel special. They were special individually, their generation was special etc. And I was reminded how at the beginning of basically every Buddhist teaching we were reminded of the opportunity we had to be born human, to have met this particular form of Buddhism, this particular form of Tibetan Buddhism and this particular teacher. As for the military aspects, I will invite you to have a closer look at the Kalacakra teachings. Don't stop at the surface, dig further, don't buy all the spiritual interpretations of the symbolism. Does spirituality really need such a heavy infrastructure to be passed on?   
>>    
>Good point, Tibetans could object that they don't say that they're  
>chosen, but that they merely have an excellent opportunity to achieve  
>something. I noticed the Shiv Sen atmosphere in the Kalacakra too, do  
>you know people who take it litterally and sort of prepare themselves  
>for war? 

Yes, I remember that during the teachings preparing the initiation, it was pointed out that participating in a Kalacakra Tantra initiation would lead to a rebirth under the reign of a certain cakravartin who would fight and win the final battle (CS Lewis style) against the barbarians. Many people present had already specific ideas about who those barbarians might be.

>In comparison, look at the youth in the West (moody bored adolescents, "hangjeugd" etc.), who are daily equaly coached and manipulated to become manpower and consumers. What we can learn from that?   
>That smoking pot isn't as healthy as we thought in the sixties. In some countries they even kill each other. But I think you're a bit unfair. Children who go to a camp usually are quite happy, whether it are boyscouts or a birdspottersweekend or a baseballtraining or whatever. They get attention, support and they can do things they like in a close and safe group. The young gangsters are those whose parents cannot afford a camp or just don't care.  

True. I always try to balance judgments of "faults" of one party by trying to find the same or similar faults in the other, the "good" party. That is the point I want go get across. It's not that I try to see negativity everywhere, but rather that since "negativity" is everywhere, why not try to see it as something else than negativity.

There was another thing I wanted to point out in this documentary. Michael Strickmann (Mantras et Mandarins) mentions the use in Buddhism (by Vajrabodhi and others) of children as mediums between our world and the spirit world. The children undergo a long preparation before entering a trance and giving the required information from the spirit world. The preparation and trances of the children in the documentary reminded me of this.     

>There's a side to this which is not confined to E.C.'s, I admit. Zygmunt Bauman calls this postmodernism. In modernism there was a  direction for history and a goal to be attained. Then there were the rational means to get there. Now truth and illusion are entwined never to be separated again. It's like a social Law of G¡¡del: every goal needs another one, and so does every justification and every truth. The media have developed into infosoaps. One way to escape this is blind belief, just convince yourself of anything to get rid of this nasty nagging feeling of inadequacy and incertainty. Some beliefsystems make me more worried then others however, especially the more millitant ones, but then again it may not always be right to put all the blame on the believers. 

I agree. I wonder if we are not entering a period of postrationalism, because even rationalism seems vulnerable to the extremism of its fellow beliefs. ;-) 
 
Joy